Well it's an age old proverb that to govern is to make sacrifices.
Everyone knows that with more than a trivial amount of people not everyone thinks the same as you. So one has to come up with a solution, either ignoring the people who think differently or meeting somewhere in the middle.
It seems to me that the US (and most newer democracies) have a real tendency to just listen to their own voters, and fully ignoring the rest. This creates a polarized society, leading to a lot of stress between different groups. (In case of say Iraq one could see even the rise of IS as an effect of this polarizing - where a group feels they are marginalized by a larger group).
The other option is to what we call here "poldering", where each group makes his stance during election. However after that the groups start to look for common grounds. Each giving in to some requirements of the other group to make sure they consolidate what they think is more important. Leaving many groups with what they feel is good, on topics they feel are important.
As a direct example I take the US government as it is right now: why do the democrats not go to the president with the idea: "hey let's talk about immigration, we would support you if you would support our idea for healthcare". Or the president going to the other parties with "hey I need this wall funded, how about we increase taxes to the top echelon of the population then we can both fund the wall and xyz you have always loved to get". Instead we see two people solidifying in their own "correctness" blaming the other from not doing exactly what they like, and in the end no one gets what they want?
Why is this act of "poldering" so alien?